As the man approached Charity, he said with a cockney accent, “How can I help you, miss?”
Charity smiled, then noticed that the man had a clipboard tucked under his left arm, between the armpit and the cushion top of the crutch. She held out her right hand.
“I’m sorry to trouble you,” Charity said with a dazzling smile. “My name is Lieutenant Hoche.”
“It’s my pleasure, Lieutenant,” he said, shaking her hand. “Christopher Johnson. I’m the adjunct here.”
“I was hoping to see Grace Higham,” Charity said pleasantly.
“She’s rather busy right now. If I could ask what this pertains to? Or perhaps I could assist?”
Charity considered that and nodded.
“Of course,” she said and composed her thought. “There was a recent Luftwaffe bombing in London. A very dear friend has not been heard from since. I am trying to find her and coming here was one of my first leads.”
“She’s in recovery here?” Johnson said and pulled the clipboard from under his arm. “What’s her name?”
“Ann Chambers,” Charity said. “But I don’t think that she’s a patient.”
Christopher Johnson flipped through a few sheets on the clipboard and scanned the names, running an index finger down the listing.
“If she were,” Charity went on, “I believe we would have heard from her.”
“No,” Johnson said, still looking at the clipboard, “not a single Chambers listed here. Ann or otherwise.” He looked up, and Charity saw genuine empathy in his blue-gray eyes. “I’m very sorry, Lieutenant.”
Charity nodded. “Thank you. But, as I said, I did not exactly expect to find her here.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, “then I’m confused. What is it that you’re looking for?”
“My friend, Ann Chambers, she has met with Mrs. Higham. Written about her, actually.”
Charity reached into her pocket and brought out the clip of Ann’s article.
“Oh, yes,” Johnson said as he reviewed it. “I have seen this. We received quite a bit of favorable attention after it was published. Many boxes came, mostly from the States. Quite a few toys and stuffed animals for the children.”
Charity smiled.
Attagirl, Ann. You touched some hearts with that one.
“That’s delightful to hear,” Charity said. “To answer your question, what I’m looking for is the woman who was driving an ambulance to bring patients out here. Sara Spenser, she’s in the article. No one can seem to find her, either, and I was thinking that perhaps she had come out here. Maybe bringing in patients, maybe working for a period of time?”
Johnson was nodding his understanding.
“And if Sara was here,” Charity went on, “perhaps I could speak to her and she might have some idea where Ann might be. She and Ann, as I understand it, became quite friendly after the profile Ann had written about Sara and then the one on Mrs. Higham.”
Charity glanced at the steps to the covered porch of the house and saw an attractive, petite Englishwoman coming out of the main door of the house, then down the steps of the porch.
That has to be the Higham woman.
“Yes,” Christopher Johnson said. “I mean, no.”
Charity looked back to him.
“I’m sorry,” she said, “I don’t—”
“Sara is—” he began.
“Mr. Johnson,” the petite Englishwoman interrupted as she approached, “is there something?”
Christopher Johnson turned at her voice.
“Mrs. Higham,” he said courteously, then motioned with his left hand to Charity as he kept his balance while leaning on the crutch. “May I present Lieutenant…”
“Hoche,” Charity furnished, holding out her hand.
“Lieutenant,” Grace Higham said somewhat sharply, shaking her hand.
Grace Higham coldly eyed the well-endowed blonde who she thought was single-handedly giving credence to the British barb that the problem with Yanks was “they were overpaid, overfed, oversexed, and over here.”
“What brings you to Great Glen?” Grace Higham went on.
“Sara Spenser,” Christopher Johnson said. “She was hoping to speak to Sara.”
Charity noticed that Grace Higham’s face registered some shock or surprise…or maybe even some disappointment.
“Is there a problem?” Charity said.
“It was our understanding,” Grace Higham said, “from Sara herself, that she did not have any family left. That they, too”—she glanced at the patients on the porch—“had been lost to bombs.”
“The lieutenant has a friend who was friends with Sara,” Christopher Johnson tried to explain.
“Ann Chambers,” Charity said. “The writer?”
That registered immediately with Grace Higham. “Of course! How is Ann?”
“She’s missing—”
“I’m terribly sorry,” Grace Higham said.
“And I thought that Sara might have some idea where she is or maybe what happened to her. At the very least, just tell me the last time that she had seen Ann so I could try to retrace her steps.”
Grace Higham was nodding. But there was clear distress in her expression.
She looked Charity in the eyes with a piercing gaze.
“I’m terribly afraid that that will be a bit difficult,” Grace Higham said softly.
Christopher Johnson looked at Grace Higham and said, “If I may?”
Grace nodded.
“Sara,” Johnson explained, “never made it here to Higham Hills. We are, as you can see”—he glanced over his shoulder at the people on the covered porch—“quite full. She was taken to Manor House.”
“Which is…?” Charity asked.
“Another residence that has taken on responsibilities similar to ours,” he said. “It’s near Yardley Hastings, just south of Northampton. I would think you passed it coming up here.”
“We were informed,” Grace Higham put in, “that Sara was taken to Manor House with another woman—”
Charity’s eyebrows went up. “Really!”
“And that they had been injured not by a bomb directly but by loose bricks falling from a storefront. I was told that Sara’s injuries were mostly superficial but that she was having difficulty speaking. Apparently, some severe type of shock.”
“And the other woman?” Charity said.
Grace Higham was quiet, then looked at Christopher Johnson.
Johnson began, “Her injuries were far worse—”
“There was significant trauma to the head,” Grace Higham added. “The doctors were able to reduce the pressure on the brain, we were told, and believed that she was ready for recovery. And so she was picked up by the runners at Manor House and taken there.”
“Runners?”
“People who help out doing odd jobs. We have a few. They have many more. The Motor Transport Corps has been stretched rather thin, their vehicles in short supply, so Manor House does not bother relying on them.”
Well, Charity thought, they should soon have another ambulance at their disposal.
Soon as it is “re-allocated.”
Charity said, “You say believed that she was ready for recovery. That suggests—”
“She didn’t make it, I’m afraid. There was an aneurysm…” Grace Higham said, her voice trailing off.
Charity suddenly had trouble hearing anything clearly for a moment. She found herself hyperventilating. Tears flowed down her cheeks.
“I’m very sorry to have to tell you that,” Grace Higham was saying somewhat stiffly. “But you do realize that this may not be your friend. There sadly are too many such stories….”
Charity struggled to hold back her deepest emotions.
“Can you tell me how to find this Manor place?” she said after a moment, her voice shaking. “I pray you’re right, that it’s not Ann. But, if it is, I need to know. And, if it isn’t, maybe I can get Sara to tell me something.”
Grace Higham thou
ght about that, then said, “I have been meaning to get over there to visit but simply have not had a moment to spare. I do think that I could go with you now.”
“Thank you,” Charity said. “Can you drive? We can take my car. But I don’t think I’m right now in any condition to do so.”
“Of course,” Grace Higham said, surprised by the lieutenant’s vulnerability and how she was unafraid to show it.
She studied Lieutenant Hoche a moment, then decided that maybe she had been indeed a bit quick to judge this book by its cover.
The forty-five-kilometer drive south—with a ten-minute stop for Charity, who thought she might be getting sick to her stomach—had taken them just shy of an hour.
Charity Hoche and Grace Higham stood with a squat woman who wore a white nurse’s outfit. They were in the doorway of what not very long ago—no more than a month—had been a working barn at Manor House.
The four horses that had been there had been moved to another barn nearby. The dirt floor had been improved, concrete poured, and the stalls modified so that they now resembled small rooms. Additional rooms had been built, fashioned from boarding. And wooden bunks had been built to hold straw mattresses.
Charity Hoche had been shocked by all that she had seen as they had walked through the main building of Manor House, past the patients there, then out to the barn.
There were indeed patients, all progressing well in their recovery, as Ann Chambers had written in her article. And there were the children. But also there were patients who looked like ghosts, some with grave injuries that had left them looking horrid.
Charity could not help but notice that these extreme cases even had a smell of death about them.
Ann hadn’t written about them because what she had written about was bleak enough.
Ann knew her audience. They wanted to read about the good that Grace Higham was doing.
Dwelling on the darkness would have lost a lot of readers—ones who would not have finished the piece, and then not have sent the packages of toys and animals for the children.
Then Charity had another thought and it was a struggle for her to contain the wave of emotion that came with it.
Was that how Ann looked—and smelled—before that artery burst in her head?
“Now, I must caution you,” the squat nurse was saying, “that what you’re about to see may be disturbing.”
“We’ll be fine,” Grace Higham said, then looked at Charity and added: “Both of us.”
This little lady has a backbone of steel, Charity thought.
“Very well,” the nurse said in an officious tone.
They came to one of the stalls converted into a room. There was the shape of a female on her back under the white sheet. The sheet was slowly rising and falling with her breathing.
The nurse motioned that they could go in.
As they stepped forward together, Grace Higham suddenly exclaimed, “Oh, God!”
Charity inhaled deeply, then whispered, “Ann!”
“Say that again,” Charity Hoche told the squat nurse as Charity, her eyes red, gently stroked Ann Chambers’s dark hair.
“She has amnesia.”
“She can’t remember who she is?” Charity said.
“Or where she came from,” the nurse said.
Charity turned and looked Ann Chambers in the eyes.
“You’re Ann,” she said softly. “Ann Chambers, remember?”
Ann blinked her eyes, and when she opened them again, Charity was convinced she saw some sign of recognition, some acknowledgment.
And even if there wasn’t, there will be eventually.
“She kept muttering, ‘Sara, Sara,’” the nurse explained. “And she would write it down. We thought that that meant she was trying to tell us her name.”
Charity’s and Grace’s eyes met.
“Then what happened to the other woman?” Grace said. “The one who died of the aneurysm?”
“We have our own cemetery, and a full, appropriate burial service was performed,” the nurse said. “Was that a mistake also? We were told there were no relatives.”
“In this case,” Grace Higham said, “that was true about Sara.”
“It wouldn’t be with Ann,” Charity added softly, looking down at her. “She has plenty of family…including me.”
Charity turned to the nurse. “She’s well enough to travel?” she said, more a statement than a question.
“Oh, no. The doctor said that she needs quiet time to recover.”
“No,” Charity said evenly. “You misunderstood me. What I said was: She is well enough to travel. I’m taking her home. Right after I pay my respects to Sara. Can you show me her resting place?”
Grace Higham felt a lump form in her throat.
Oh, how I like this Yank!
Not only is she taking charge of her friend, she’s taking the time for Sara, too—not at her “grave” but at her “resting place.”
Ann Chambers, you are indeed one fortunate soul to have such a friend.
[TWO]
Whitbey House Kent, England 2150 4 April 1943
Charity Hoche surprised herself at how fast she made the return trip to Whitbey House. She realized that that was in part thanks to Grace Higham’s having arranged for a runner to shuttle her back to Great Glen, saving Charity a two-hour round-trip, and putting her—with Ann Chambers in the backseat—that much closer to Kent.
When they had arrived, Charity had not exercised a great deal of self-control. She had been impatient; she found it difficult not to bark at anybody who she felt got in her way or who did not immediately do what she asked of them in a manner she considered satisfactory.
Bob Jamison had had to delicately take her aside and say that he would handle the details, including getting Ann down to the dispensary.
“You just went through a hellish emotional roller-coaster ride,” Jamison had said. “Catch your breath and let me worry about the little things.”
When Charity had looked him in the eyes, Jamison saw a fury mixed with fear.
Then, slowly, her eyes softened, her body grew less tense, and she nodded.
“Thank you, Bob.”
“She has a mild amnesia,” Major Richard B. Silver, M.D., said to Charity Hoche and Bob Jamison. He held the medical file that the staff at Manor House had put together on Ann Chambers and given to Charity. “It’s a dissociative amnesia.”
They were in the left wing of the mansion, in the dispensary, what had once been the ballroom of Whitbey House. Ann Chambers lay sleeping peacefully in one of the sixteen field-hospital beds. Under Dr. Silver’s supervision, the medical staff had given her a complete checkup, then a bath, and then she had been made comfortable.
Silver was a tall man, easily six-four, with a deep, commanding voice that he modulated with the skill of a radio broadcaster. His tone could be strong, but at the same time the sound of his voice would carry no farther than those in the immediate conversation—all the while conveying an utter confidence and authority that was not to be questioned.
He was good at what he did. He knew it. And those he dealt with knew it.
“Dissociative?” Charity repeated.
Major Silver nodded.
“Amnesia is too commonly misunderstood,” he went on, “and, accordingly, very often misinterpreted. Broadly, amnesia is defined as profound memory loss. Ann has dissociative amnesia. A person blocks out critical information, usually something that is stressful or traumatic. Thus, she would be dissociative to that event.”
Charity looked at Ann, then back to Silver.
“I believe that we can rule out transient global amnesia,” he said.
It was obvious from Charity’s expression that that meant nothing to her.
“Transient global amnesia is the loss of all memory,” he explained, “but only temporarily. It has elements of severe anterograde amnesia, which is caused by brain trauma and involves the ability to form new memories, and retrograde amnesia, the ability to reca
ll memories only hours old. The reason we can discount it is because it’s most commonly associated with vascular disease.”
“Vascular disease?” Jamison repeated. “Isn’t that an older person’s disease?”
Dr. Silver nodded. “Right. Which brings us to the dissociative amnesia called fugue amnesia.”
Jamison shook his head.
“Also known as fugue state,” Silver explained. “As in, a disoriented state of mind. Some even call it ‘hysterical amnesia.’”
Jamison noticed that Charity seemed to respond to the term hysterical.
“What causes it?” Charity said.
“A traumatic event,” Dr. Silver went on, “something that the mind simply is not able to handle. Such as witnessing a murder, a particularly bad automobile collision, a—”
“A bombing?” Charity interrupted. “From an air raid?”
“Yes,” he replied, nodding softly. “I am thinking that she must have seen her friend struck down by the bricks, as you described. That could cause it.”
Charity considered that.
“Is there any treatment?” she said.
“Time,” Major Silver said. “Time and love. Sedation sometimes is necessary. Pyschotherapy, talking with a psychiatrist, can be helpful. In extreme cases, there’s hypnosis and sodium amobarbital, which helps recall lost memories. Left alone, however, the memory can slowly return. Or it can suddenly return. And the patient may or may not recall what caused the trauma.”
Charity smiled. “That’s the best news I’ve heard in a long time. Thank you, Major.”
Bob Jamison found Charity Hoche in the pub. She was at the bar, nursing what appeared to be a martini cocktail made with Prime Minister Churchill’s personal recipe.
She heard his footsteps approaching and turned toward him as he took the seat beside her.
“Just got off the secure line with Ed Stevens in London. He said to tell you congratulations, and thank you, and that he will speak with you personally tomorrow about quote saving the OSS unquote from the wrath of Ann’s father—”
The Double Agents (AUDIOBOOK) (CD) Page 31